Thursday, July 31, 2014

I
had been planning on saving these until I got them finished (those
tables are what's holding them up so far, but since +Jez Gordon
declared today to be “Awesome Gamer Day, then I should least toss
up a preview for the folks that are interested in this.

First
up, and the most completed, the Mad Bomber. Since I'm going for a
Muppet Show feel for some aspects of this game, I should mention that
goblin bombs are not particularly dangerous, partly due to the
goblins immunity to blunt damage. (it knocks out, rather than
actually injures). When a goblin bomb goes off, there's a smokey
cloud of soot, and most within its radius (around 5 feet) are knocked
back or sent flying a short distance.

The
inspiration for this background is Crazy Harry from the Muppet Show.
This charming fellow would show up, and set off an explosion, and
then there'd be some laughter.

Bombers
do more than blow things (and goblins) up for humorous purposes, They
also contribute to the well-being of Flopsburg by going fishing. A
few well-placed bombs, and there's enough fish for a few days. The
fish is the nearby Tenebrous Loch have adapted by multiplying on a
larger scale than normal, thus preventing a potential loss of food
for the goblins.

Up
next are the Stick-Pokers, whose (potentially dangerous) job is to
poke at things with sticks. (the areas around Flopsburg have a
certain deadliness to them that can not be understated).

Many
of them start out with long sticks, and those that aren't suddenly
gobbled up by any number of unsavory things soon move on to shorter
sticks, learning to rely on quick reflexes to avoid danger. Since
most of them provide assistance to hunters and woodcutters (the
goblins are constantly rebuilding Flopsburg), most soon learn how to
field strip an animal, thus gaining the proficiency in the Survival
skill.

While
that's the general idea of what I have thus far, I'm still
considering other Backgrounds for the goblins, including a
Storyteller/Performer Background.

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

It's still pretty rough, but most of the areas are there. This version is a DM map, as it shows a few locations that I'm thinking of using as adventure spots. Flopburg is in an area with scrubs and small hills, and the goblins only go there if they get bored and decide to hunt there, as the wood does not work well for building.
Most of their wood comes from the Gibbering Bog, or better yet the Gloomy Thickets (though they rarely go too deeply into the Thickets). Each hex is roughly a human league (as per Jeff Rients, but since most goblins are small, it takes them a little longer to get through them).

Monday, July 21, 2014

Recently, an idea
came to me, and while still currently raw and unrefined, has
something that I can work with and add onto. My working title for
this is Muppet D&D.

What Muppet D&D
isn't is Muppet characters reenacting the Lord of the Rings or the
Dragonlance Saga. What it is, however, is an attempt to craft a
setting that takes the feel of the Muppet Show, and adapt it to the
D&D milieu. (Your Muppet D&D may be different from mine,
however).

South of the Barbed
Crags, and the Gloomy Thickets, past the Nebulous Moors and the
Gibbering Bog, the Exuberant Runnel flows southward, going past the
goblin village of Flopburg

(though calling that
fiasco a village is kind of pushing it) towards the dark waters of
the Tenebrous Loch.

Flopburg, while a
chaotic mess most of the time, somehow thrives regardless of whatever
natural rules that may be followed elsewhere. The goblins spend most
of their days building or repairing houses (or what passes for them
at times), collecting food, tuning instruments, cooking or making
things to blow stuff up with.

It is with bombs
that the goblin begin to excel. While the method of bomb making is
generally known to to the Mad Bombers of Flopburg, they will teach
anyone who asks (and in many cases, didn't ask). The bombs tend to
have two general purposes in goblin society; fishing and
entertainment.

Every night, the
goblins of Flopburg gather, and have a wild party, glad to have
survived yet another day. These parties are accentuated with music,
laughter, feasting, explosions and more laughter.

An interesting
feature of goblin explosives is that they really don't injure
anyone-- even when one is sent flying and hits something, it laughs,
and runs back to the party. It had been discovered that blunt force
trauma had little effect on anyone, other than perhaps knocking
someone out for awhile. While goblins are curious and inquisitive,
they long ago learned to shrug and get back to whatever they were
doing, but did note that this effect only carried over to other
sapient races, not to animals and many of the monsters (goblin
explosives, however, had no ill effect on anything)

It is to this
almost idyllic setting that I intend to introduce science fiction
energy weapons, because such weapons in the hands of the goblins
would be funny, even if they do happen to inflict serious damage.